I have an app on the Google Playstore and I want a way to alert my users whenever I deploy a new version of the app. I want to know how to make this possible. Does Google Playstore provide any APIs or SDKs to make this possible?
I use React-native for development, incase the answer may depend on this.
Yes, the Playstore supports this feature named In-app-updates
There is no official implementation for this here, but take a look at this.
You can use In-app updates:
In-app updates is a Google Play Core libraries feature that prompts
active users to update your app.
There are mainly two update flows.
Flexible updates
Immediate updates
Here is a detailed guide that describes how to support in-app updates in your app.
Related
For in-app updates feature in Android,
How to configure Flexible/Immediate release on Playstore?
You have to write your own logic whether you want Flexible or Immediate Update as there is no such functionality in Google Play Console for now.
I found this on Google Issue Tracker
Soon you'll be able to specify an in-app update priority for your app
release, which will be made available through the in-app update API.
Please see this Android Developer Summit talk for more details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o_q6hatcIs
I know Apple has this API I can hit:
http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?bundleId={id}
However, for the PlayStore, I'm looking for something similar, rather than parsing the app page
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id={id}
and then looking for the <div> that contains itemprop="softwareVersion"
There are a few questions about this here on SO and elsewhere on the web, but they are outdated, and make reference to unofficial APIs.
There is no Official API for grabbing the App version from the Play store.
I'd be curious exactly what you would use such an API for, if you wanted to add it in a comment. There may be a better way of achieving what you want.
Edit:
For forcing an update to your app there are other recommendations. We normally recommend that you don't have "always update to the latest version in the Play store" to developers. For example, the user might want to use your app, but be in a place where they don't have much battery or wifi. Forcing them to update in such a situation is rude, it's much better to give them a week or two until a more convenient time.
If you want to do "never have a version that is more than a couple of weeks old", can I recommend Firebase Remote Config. This would let you on the server update a configuration options for your app saying "the user should have at least this version" and change the behaviour of your app accordingly. It is much more flexible at robust than polling the Play store.
Another approach can be the Support In-app updates besides Firebase Remote config.
Google has released the Support In-app updates feature in which the apps can nudge the users to update their apps without even going to the play store. If an update is available, the users will see a dialog or a full blocking screen where the UI is generated and controlled by google play.
In-app updates works only with devices running Android 5.0 (API level 21) or higher, and requires you to use Play Core library 1.5.0 or higher. After meeting these requirements, your app can support the following UX for in-app updates!
references are here and this helpful blog. Check this out, hope it will help.
Considering that Google just announced a lot of good changes to Firebase recently and the stability that comes with "Google" in terms of future, I am inclined to make my decision and use Firebase for production but
My question is, would using the new Firebase as BaaS limit my application to only work on devices which support google services or not?
Is there any solution for that? If not yet, is there any information on whether google has any plan for solving this in the near future ?
Thanks in advance.
Yes, according to the Firebase Documentation, you need a device running Google Play Services 2.9.1 or newer.
My question is, would using the new Firebase as BaaS limit my application to only work on devices which support google services or
not?
No. Google Play Services is only required for Android devices and nearly every device has them installed. (Except those crappy gumball machine phones but it's save to ignore them)
Is there any solution for that? If not yet, is there any information on whether google has any plan for solving this in the
near future ?
Since there is no problem there is no solution needed. Firebase is currently available for Android and iOS applications and has an API for Web Development as well if you wanna use the data on your own website.
I want to know if it is possible to check if the app that the user is running is the latest version that is available at Google PlayStore. I have read some answers and they say that this is not possible, but I see some apps that do this.
Can someone tell me how can I do this? I can see that this is possible.
Indeed the Google Play Services do not expose such API.
But you could use a workaround to check for newer versions: a simple request on your serveur could do, parsing the Play Store page could do too etc.
You can create an api on your server for these kind of operations.
Your api can return values such as currentVersionCode, minVersionCode and an updateMessage.
You can compare your apps version code, currentVersionCode and minVersionCode and show a dialog for nice to update or force update.
My application will have a low cost for a basic version.
If the user need more features, heneed to buy plug-in.
Question is:
What is the best solution for this approach?
Better the use of in-app billing or publish packet that contain the plug-in as normal apps with a price ?
Thank you
In-app billing is the recommended means for providing extra features. There's very little to worry about with it, as it's all taken care of through google play functionality. Otherwise you're requiring your users to download a whole new apk file as a paid for thing.
This page on the Android Developer site gives a good set of instructions on how to achieve this.